Let’s get started with the latest from Fife and Chase over at the Globe and Mail: Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson will personally question Justin Trudeau and Bill Blair in her probe of Liberal cash-for-access fundraisers to establish whether conflict of interest rules were broken.

Over in Ontario, the PCs have dismissed an appeal seeking to have the Burlington nomination of ex-MPP Jane McKenna overturned. The riding association’s membership chair had filed an appeal last week arguing it was unfair and plagued by irregularities. Ainslie Cruickshank has that story. Grit-wise, there’s a pause in a high-profile Election Act bribery case Involving two prominent Ontario Liberals. It’s been adjourned until January – and the Crown attorney’s future on the case seems to be up in the air. CP has what’s what with the case.

Details are expected soon in the case of Quebec police surveilling top journalists. The Globe reports that the first of dozens of warrants are expected to be disclosed as early as today.

Surprise of the day: As the federal Liberals pursue a trade deal with China, Chrystia Freeland says they first want to… yeah, you guessed it: hold a consultation.

Oil prices have stabilised following Wednesday’s U.S. rate hike, the second in roughly a decade, with Brent crude futures trading around $54 and WTI crude at about $51. Reuters reports ANZ bank said if OPEC and other producers go ahead with their planned output cuts, prices could get pushed “well above $60 per barrel” early 2017.

To the UK, where BBC reports Britain’s envoy to the EU has quietly told the government that a post-Brexit EU trade deal with the UK might take a decade to finalize and could still fail. Meanwhile the country won’t reveal its Brexit plan, still being worked on, and negotiating aims in detail until at least February.

An inflatable sex doll has blown up into a life-sized scandal for Chile’s economy minister. A business association gave the doll to him at a dinner as part of a tradition of gifting ministers bizarre things come Christmas time. But his boss – Chile’s first woman president – isn’t laughing at all the lame “stimulate the economy” jokes as the country struggles with high rates of gender violence.

IN FEATURED OPINION THIS MORNING

Online right-wing screamer Ezra Levant couldn’t have picked a softer target than the one he picked on this week: a 23-year-old student and part-time journalist who covered a Calgary anti-carbon tax rally, was reportedly threatened with death by one of the participants — and was basically mocked by Levant for her trouble. Classy.

Enough, says Stephen Maher. An online media outlet with The Rebel’s scope ought to set its sights a little higher than beating up on the dwindling number of working journalists still trying to hold back the flood of fake news perverting the public sphere.

Brent Rathgeber steps up with a few observations on last week’s ‘historic’ First Ministers’ agreement on a pan-Canadian policy framework for climate change. First, it’s only an “agreement” if you think the premiers had a choice — they didn’t. Second, Brad Wall’s got a stronger legal case against carbon pricing than most observers seem to realize.

Jonathan Manthorpe explains how Donald Trump blew up decades of careful diplomacy with his incoherent recent rants on China and Taiwan; he’s not even sworn in yet and he’s already turning up the temperature on the Korean peninsula.

AND…

Here’s some weird legislative history that every Canadian political wonk should know about, ‘case you didn’t already: Look up Sessional Paper 301 in the Alberta legislature, and you’ll find a hamburger, now encased in plastic and not looking too hot, that an MLA tabled during a budget debate in 1969 in protest of how bad the food was at the cafeteria.